Yeah.

But I thought, "I love this man." I was so hopeful and in love, and I s-thought to myself, "I would just follow him anywhere.

I will support him, whatever he wants to do." And so he joined the military and oh, wow, was that a life-learning experience.

[chuckles] Um, it was just such a unique lifestyle that, uh, it just kinda shocked me, um, what all it entailed.

I, I knew that we would move around a lot, but I didn't anticipate, I don't think, what my role was going to be as a military spouse.

I didn't know any other military spouses.

We didn't know any-

Yeah

Is that because he was in the military? Maybe he was away too much to have the counseling?

We ended up having several, what I call, divorce talks, just kind of saying, one of us said, "I'm done.

We're gonna finally go through with this divorce." We didn't go to counseling in Japan because we were at a very small Navy base, and we actually socialized with the people who could have offered us some help.

And this was early on before there was online therapy that you could go to and access.

There was none of that online.

That was many years ago.

And so we did eventually go to counseling.

How did you learn to advocate for yourself and your children in this new dynamic?